IPCC's AR5 Frankenscience – bringing proxies back from the dead

Steve McIntyre has a hilarious post on the desperate measures needed to get some non peer reviewed papers into the IPCC’s AR5. I am not sure where the phrase ‘Frankenscience’ comes from but it seems appropriate for AR5 which already looks DOA.

Well done, Josh. Love the nifty use of color. Yeah, that piece of junk will NEVER fly with those “with eyes to see.” BUT,
to the Cult of Climatology (i.e., the true believers in the general public and the news media), that ratty old book will be seen as “…a marvelous example of recycling! Why, look at that, Elmer, he even used a piece of the interior of your old Buick. THAT’s really wonderful.”

IPCC and the ACC (anthropogenic climate change) crowd does not depend on observational facts and measured data. They depend on consensus as the whole issue is more political or social science than natural science. Natural science is just as a charade to make the politics of ACC more respectable. It is just like the quantum mechanics equations behind some yoga exercise. However, the current economic and social problems in the EU, Japan and the other developed countries provides a window of opportunity for a real change in the public policy direction. As much as natural scientists looks down on social science, the ACC politics and public policy are driven by the principles and theories of social science. In the ACC debate, natural scientists could deliver their messages more effectively if they also apply the principles of social science to their strategy. For example, Godwin law is nothing more than the application of target population principle that when facts and data does not count anymore as the debate becomes emotional or political the contending parties tries to push each other to lower right side of the social construction space. Long before the blogs and the Nazis, it was Ginghis, Bonny (Bonaparte), Nick (the devil Machiavelli) that were used in emotional debate in some form of Godwin law. ACC crowd has effectively occupied the upper left side of the social construction space to be able to accept grants from large oil companies and even post it in their websites but are quick to smear the opposition for unknowingly accepting a very small grant from the same source. It is also for this reason that in spite of the all the frauds and errors exposed in the modeling and science of ACC, governments and other past respectable natural science societies continues to pay tribute and accolade to the ACC “scientists”. Using money as a simple explanation to the re-emergence of proven fallacies would be an over simplification of the politics of ACC. Natural scientists could claim the science is settled and proven beyond reasonable doubts, ACC is very minor but it will have minimal impacts if the politics continues to favor ACC policies because politicians feel the consensus if in favor of ACC.

As far as I know, it is highly irregular to newly insert into a Chapter draft after expert review a citation to a paper supporting novel findings . My understanding is that the paper would normally be referred to in the review draft and then (it should be) withdrawn if it does not make the ‘accepted’ or ‘published’ deadline. Other than a second or third citation added at the same point in the text (ie confirmation citations), the only exception I know of in the first three reports is in SAR, Ch8 where Santer, 1996b is explicitly referred to in the text but was nowhere in the review draft.
If anyone knows otherwise (perhaps Steve does, perhaps in AR4) then I would be interested to hear.

This comment at Steve’s site is incredibly enlightening,
“Clark: The length limits are never hard-and-fast. The bigger the ‘splash,’ the more one can exceed the length limits, regardless of field.
When I review for Nature (not climate science), I find about half of the reviewers (we get to see all the reviews) do a superficial review. When this happens, they are typically reviewing how ‘significant’ the work is, not how scientifically sound it is. Interestingly, the journals a step down from Science and Nature have on average much more rigorous and consistent reviews.One thing that is definitely more true of Nature and Science than any other journal I’ve reviewed for is that the editor will override a critical review if the lead author is prominent enough. The sections editors for both journals will go to scientific meetings in their areas to scout out the ‘hottest’ findings.“

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